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It remains to notice the theory of the one Causing-Principle
alleged to interweave everything with everything else, to make
things into a chain, to determine the nature and condition of
each phenomenon- a Principle which, acting through seminal
Reason-Forms- Logoi Spermatikoi- elaborates all that exists and
happens.
The doctrine is close to that which makes the Soul of the
Universe the source and cause of all condition and of all
movement whether without or- supposing that we are allowed as
individuals some little power towards personal act- within
ourselves.
But it is the theory of the most rigid and universal Necessity:
all the causative forces enter into the system, and so every
several phenomenon rises necessarily; where nothing escapes
Destiny, nothing has power to check or to change. Such forces
beating upon us, as it were, from one general cause leave us no
resource but to go where they drive. All our ideas will be
determined by a chain of previous causes; our doings will be
determined by those ideas; personal action becomes a mere word.
That we are the agents does not save our freedom when our action
is prescribed by those causes; we have precisely what belongs to
everything that lives, to infants guided by blind impulses, to
lunatics; all these act; why, even fire acts; there is act in
everything that follows the plan of its being, servilely.
No one that sees the implications of this theory can hesitate:
unable to halt at such a determinant principle, we seek for other
explanations of our action.
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